Keep out: Flinders Street designers warned of no-go zone

Such is the secrecy surrounding the plans to redesign Flinders Street Station that the finalists – including Hassell + Herzog & de Meuron and Zaha Hadid and local firms Ashton Raggatt McDougall and NH Architecture – were forbidden by the state government from attending an exhibition of the rejected designs.

Major Projects Victoria sent letters to the six architecture firms that made the shortlist, warning them that going to the November 22 event – even as observers – would mean they were attending an event that proposed to bring the competition into "disrepute".

The "Long-listers" event (those who didn't make the shortlist) was organised by the owners of Fitzroy-based architecture firm Edwards Moore, who said they wanted to capture the excitement generated by the design contest.

The evening allowed participants to see and discuss their unsuccessful proposals.

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Finalists were invited to attend but architect and organiser Juliet Moore said they were not asked to exhibit their designs or speak about them.

According to competition rules, no participants are allowed to exhibit their work before a winner is picked.

Ms Moore said she strongly supported the aims of the design competition but the warning from Major Projects had been "overkill".

"It made out what we were doing was something outlawish," Ms Moore said.

"We wanted peer collaboration . . . too often these things are done behind closed doors. By the time the designs are revealed [a year later] the moment has passed."

All finalists who had planned to attend the long-listers event pulled out after getting the letter.

A spokesman for Major Projects Victoria said it was striving to run a competition that held to the highest levels of integrity and having finalists see unsuccessful designs might lead to future wrangling over intellectual property.

Despite being eliminated from the contest, many architects told Fairfax Media they enjoyed developing their proposals and wanted them to be publicly aired to trigger discussion about the site.

Designs seen by Fairfax Media offer a range of ambitious possibilities for the grand Edwardian railway station.

Take the proposal from Andrew Burns Architect – a flowing roof that referenced the original 1899 competition-winning scheme by Fawcett and Ashworth, which had a large, arched roof that was not built due to the cost.

Andrew Burns said the Sydney-based firm thought of the design as Melbourne's Opera House – an elegant form by the water, which would have contained a large commercial and entertainment precinct built above rail yards at the west of the site.

Fraser Paxton Architects envisaged a series of towers covered in scales at the western end that hark back to the site's former use as a fish market. In the middle of the site? "A swimming pool, somewhere for the public to go after work or on a lunch break, something that wasn't too serious," Mr Paxton said.

All the small firms Fairfax Media spoke to said they had spent upwards of 300 hours on their projects, while most of the large international firms employ teams whose sole remit is to work on design competitions.

Melbourne-based architects Edwards Moore said their low-tech response to the brief showed that by doing very little you could have a significant impact on surrounding areas.

"It was an unroofed, uncovered solution, with ramps and changes in elevation to create views and vistas from the platform," Juliet Moore said.

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The collaborative design from Mihaly Slocombe, Steve Rose Architect and Foong + Sormann tried to create a new set of "terrains", a garden landscape that would open the site to the public with a series of streets and lanes linking down to the river.